How the Internet Is Affecting Our Brains
When researchers presented evidence to people that the internet causes addiction, depression, and psychological discombobulation, they resounded,“‘What’s next? Microwave abuse and Chapstick addiction’” (Dokoupil). Truthfully, people find the evidence impossible to fathom. The Internet allows us to instantly access the business world, keep in touch with our friends, and make our work easier. It would seem that the benefits would far outweigh any problems. Serious problems, however, can occur to Internet users when they use the Internet far too much. Evidence shows that excessive Internet use can damage people's intelligence, hinder relations and cause depression, and can impose on people a virtual world or an altered sense of reality. Empirical evidence shows that excessive Internet use damages our intelligence. According to Carr, in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” studies show that over time, Internet users read differently by skimming over passages, reading only the first several pages of articles, and browsing quickly through information without taking the time and the effort to comprehend what they read. Carr cites studies showing that reading on the internet alters circuits in the brain that causes people to become decoders of information, losing capacity to deeply think about the subjects they read. The cause is the internet’s business world. Google and other companies attempt to feed people as much information as possible so that they can gain opportunities to give out advertisements and distract people into buying them. Thus, the net scatters people’s attention over a wide area of information and makes their concentration fuzzy. This huge business network, as it increasingly governs peoples’ lives, causes them to act like mechanical beings, with a fixed schedule, who monotonously absorb loads of information without actually gaining intelligence. Over time, people lose the cognitive skills to concentrate and think deeply about subjects. In extreme cases,